By Hallie Wilson | Twitter @halwil5 | Instagram @halliewilson5

I have had the pleasure of playing for some of the biggest names in our game and could write pages about the impact that they all have had on me. I feel lucky to have been guided by some of the best to do it and am eternally grateful for all of the time and energy that each of my coaches spent on me and my development as a person and player. I chose to highlight two very different men, one who I spent years playing for and the other only a summer. Both had instrumental roles in the coach and person I am today. 

Travis Wilson Talks Strategies

I think the softball world slept on the entire Florida State University staff for a long time. More importantly, I think the softball world slept on Travis Wilson for a long time. He is a sarcastic Kiwi with charisma and jokes to spare and I never would have had the opportunity to meet or play for the Florida State coach if it weren’t for the years I spent playing for the USSSA Pride, and I’m so happy I did. 

I always thought of myself as a contact hitter whose main goal is to get on base. I was a selective hitter who worked the count to find my way on. Travis’s mentality was more aggressive, he encouraged us to swing at the first pitch and take hacks on a 3-0 count. 

One series, our whole team seemed to be in a funk at the plate. We were collectively hesitant and timid at the plate, letting good pitches go and chasing bad ones. In an attempt to snap us out of it, Travis challenged the whole team to be more aggressive earlier in the count. He put a $100 bill on the board and said whoever got an extra-base hit on the first pitch of the at-bat would get the $100 after the game. 

I don’t know if it was the $100 or if I was just sick of being filled with doubt, but I decided to buy into Travis’s challenge and swing at any first-pitch strikes I saw that game, and you better believe I took home that $100. I felt a regained confidence walking to the plate. It was aggressiveness and trust that I had not felt since college and I was excited. 

Travis and I began debating the strategies behind efficient hitting and mechanics for different hitters. It was exciting to have a coach who appreciated the benefits of our different approaches and never tried to change my mechanics or turn me into something I am not. He encouraged me to embrace little pieces of multiple styles and to leverage them to my advantage. 

Travis Wilson was the first coach I had who I trusted not to yell at me for an aggressive mistake. He didn’t care if I swung out of my shoes in a 3-0 count or got thrown out taking an extra bag on the base. He encouraged me to push my limits and to learn how far I could stretch them. 2018 was a huge year for Florida State University taking home their first National Championship and making their permanent mark on the softball world. It will be exciting to see what they do in the future. 

The Culture of Tony Rico

When I was in high school I played for arguably the best travel ball team and coach in the nation. I was a Worth Firecracker before travel ball became a huge monopoly, back when organizations had one team per age group and that was that. 

My head coach was Tony Rico. He is the most vigorous coach I ever played for. Tony cultivated a culture that is difficult to describe. His standards were high but they were abstract. He demanded the best and held the team to standards that exceeded fielding and hitting perfectly. Every play had to be beautiful, rhythmic, and full of energy and grace. Every emotion we had was expected to be controlled and composed, orchestrated to make it seem like we had been there before. We ran down the line with perfect L’s in our elbows like robots and dove for every foul ball, no matter how far fetched the catch. 

Tony’s expectations for the team were always evolving. He had a way of connecting real-life issues to softball and could read the energy of the team before we even began warm-ups. Looking back now I think he knew, or decided, who was going to have a good or bad game before we even began. He seemed to follow his intuition above all else and taught us to do the same. 

I remember being frustrated with his constantly changing standards and moods. Some days it felt like I had him figured out like we were finally on the same page and could joke and be sarcastic with one another while other days it seemed as though everything that went wrong in the game was my fault. 

I remember writing in my journal about feeling inadequate. I began to doubt that I had any real leadership skills at all. I remember thinking that it was better to just play quietly than risk the backlash of speaking up. I thought this was a way of rebelling against the insurmountable standards he set. 

Tony’s methods are unique. He is a musician with his finger on the pulse of the softball world who could often be found playing the drums on a bucket and brainstorming his next business venture. A while back a journalist deemed him the “Softball Yoda” and there’s never been a more accurate description for what Tony is and has been for our game. 

While I played for Tony he made me question what and who I wanted to be in this world and how I would get there. He forced me to push boundaries and dig deeper to succeed. When I think back, I believe he had a plan to teach me everything he could about the game without ever letting me believe I had learned it all. He kept me hungry for more and never let me settle, even when I knew I had done well. He was never the coach to stroke an ego or let anyone think they were special, but he was the coach I never knew I needed. I always had a fire in my belly to be the best and Tony challenged that fire. He tried to blow it out, he would throw obstacle after obstacle in my path in hopes that I would question my leadership skills and my adequacy. He tried to break me only so that I would learn I am unbreakable. 

I learned more about softball and who I am as a person in my four years playing for Tony than I did with any other coach. Whether that is credited to my age at the time or his abundance knowledge I don’t know, but I do know that the lessons I learned as a Worth Firecracker followed me throughout my career and for that I am forever grateful.